Recital 56

(56)In an internal banking market, credit institutions are engaged in direct competition with one another and monitoring requirements throughout the Community should therefore be equivalent. To that end, the criteria applied to determining the concentration of exposures must be the subject of legally binding rules at Community level and cannot be left entirely to the discretion of the Member States. The adoption of common rules will therefore best serve the Community's interests, since it will prevent differences in the conditions of competition, while strengthening the Community's banking system.